Southwest revitalises their popular Rapid Rewards loyalty program

Southwest’s popular Rapid Rewards loyalty program will be revitalised to a points-based loyalty scheme with based on money spent for a ticket.

You don’t need to worry if you have already accrued credits, Southwest will convert your credits to points and customers will not lose out. This is a very clever way of extending the loyalty currency. With the revitalised program, customers will accrue points whenever they buy a ticket with higher multiples for higher levels of their three-tiered pricing.

Southwest is also setting up a redemption system which enables customers to purchase other travel through a third-party vendor. Southwest has partnered with a third-party provider, Maritz, to offer additional rewards such as international flights, hotels, car rentals, gift cards and other products. Points will not expire as long as the Rewards member has earning activity in a two-year period.

Southwest customers can redeem points for trips to more than 800 destinations, stays at 70,000 hotels worldwide and for gift cards with 45 vendors.